''To Charlie Condon,'' reads the inscription, ''who is saving lives while others prattle on about the rights of drug addicts.''

Even without that endorsement of Mr. Condon's most disputed act as South Carolina Attorney General -- prosecuting pregnant crack cocaine addicts for child neglect and even manslaughter -- the Republican prosecutor's political ideals shine stark and clear.

Instead of an electric chair, he once proposed an ''electric sofa'' to speed executions. He pushed to preserve the State Capitol's Confederate flag -- a symbol that even the conservative Senator Strom Thurmond, Republican of South Carolina, reluctantly said was too contentious. He is attacking video poker, refused to swear in an atheist justice of the peace and firmly supported the Citadel's fight to bar female cadets.

And if he has his way, this well-off, well-educated man from a respected Charleston family could stand before the highest court in the land and argue that a crack user's fetus is ''a fellow South Carolinian'' and has protections under the law.

In October, a majority of the State Supreme Court supported Mr. Condon in his assertion that a viable fetus is a person under the state's child abuse laws, and that a woman who uses illegal drugs while she is pregnant can be charged with neglect, manslaughter, even murder. The court, by a 3-to-2 vote, upheld the conviction of Cornelia Whitner, sentenced to eight years for neglect in 1992 after she gave birth to a baby with traces of cocaine in its blood.

The South Carolina court contradicted five other State Supreme Courts that threw out similar convictions, and now lawyers for Ms. Whitner are expected to appeal her case to the United States Supreme Court. If the Court agrees to hear the case, it will give South Carolina's Attorney General more than just a place to defend his law.

''It is a wedge into reconsidering Roe v. Wade,'' said Steven Bates, the South Carolina director of the American Civil Liberties Union. ''It's kind of scary to open that door of opportunity to the Supreme Court.''

By prosecuting pregnant addicts, Mr. Condon says, he is only trying to protect the unborn, and if a woman chooses, she can get drug treatment and generally avoid prosecution.

Some fear that the prosecutions could be expanded so that a woman who aborted a fetus for a medical reason could be charged in the death of the child. (Mr. Condon has said his office would review such cases but so far there have been no charges connected with abortion.)

Under Mr. Condon's interpretation of the law, health workers who do not report pregnant addicts to law-enforcement officials could also be prosecuted. None has been prosecuted so far. And only 23 women have been prosecuted for charges ranging from neglect to manslaughter.

But what he has done, mainly, is revisit the question of when life begins. It is a battle that he relishes.

''You don't have the right to have a drug-impaired child,'' said Mr. Condon, 44, a tall, thin, sharp-faced man who looks good in a suit and graduated magna cum laude from Duke University's School of Law. ''The child comes from God. We think we're in line with how most people feel in this country. We recognize the fetus as a fellow South Carolinian. And the right to privacy does not overcome the right to life.''

It promises to be a well-lighted stage for a politician who, political experts say, likes the glow.

He is, in a sense, just one of a flood of conservative politicians -- some, like him, who used to be Democrats -- who have surged into state office in the South. Yet Mr. Condon is more effective, say supporters, and much more dangerous, say his enemies, than others in this genre of populists.

''He doesn't just talk,'' said David Lublin, a professor of political science at the University of South Carolina. ''He makes a staunch use of the power of his pulpit, but also the power of his office,'' to pound out changes in South Carolina society.

Dick Harpootlian, a lawyer and former prosecutor who lost to Mr. Condon in the race for attorney general, said the political payoff is what motivates this crusade.

''He has the ability to disabuse himself of any beliefs he had and to adopt the beliefs that 51 percent of the people have at that moment,'' said Mr. Harpootlian, referring to Mr. Condon's party switch in 1990.

Political experts say that Mr. Condon will seek higher office -- the governorship or a United States Senate seat -- and he has been criticized by people within his own party for personally prosecuting big-headline cases. But those who see him as a political opportunist see only half the picture, political experts said.

''He seems to be willing to do anything to court the Republican right-wing electorate, and he's very ambitious,'' Mr. Lublin said. ''But he seems to have genuine beliefs, and he seems to follow through on them. He's not a hypocrite, which is a rare quality. He's very intelligent, he's good at speaking, and even though he's stating his views from the very most right-wing stance, he doesn't sound crazy.''

That, Mr. Lublin said, is ''the thing that makes him so acceptable, or so dangerous, if you're a liberal.''

Mr. Bates of the A.C.L.U. admires Mr. Condon. ''I would not call him a political opportunist,'' he said. ''He is not afraid to take a bold stand, usually on the popular side of an issue. But that may be because he is of the people rather than a panderer to the people.''

Mr. Bates added that what the A.C.L.U. opposes is ''a wide disparity'' in the law's application, ''where of the first 23 women arrested, 22 were black women on welfare.''

But it is Mr. Condon who, as some old-time preachers are fond of saying, holds the Bible and the sword.

It was his prosecution of crack-addicted mothers in the early 1990's, when he was a county prosecutor, that ultimately led to this confrontation. Mothers who were found to be using crack cocaine or other drugs were reported by health workers to the police, on orders of the county prosecutor, who filed criminal charges against them. Mr. Condon continued the practice when he became Attorney General in 1994.

The American Medical Association has already criticized the application of the law in South Carolina as poor health policy, saying drug treatment is better than prosecution.

In the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the United States Supreme Court ruled that even viable fetuses, usually 25 weeks or older, can be aborted to protect a mother's health.

''The position in this society is that the law should have no control over a child as long as the umbilical cord is attached,'' Mr. Condon said. ''Social leniency,'' he said, has created a world in which babies are at risk from their mothers' drug habits.

''Either use the criminal process or don't do anything,'' he said. ''All we are asking for is the barest minimum of responsibility.''

He is an odd hero in this cause that the Christian Coalition and other groups on the Christian right so overwhelmingly support. Mr. Condon has drawn support from fundamentalists and the sort of good old boy who does not want to see millions of taxpayer dollars spent on crack babies.

He is neither. Condon's Department Store, owned by his family, is a landmark in Charleston. He was one of nine children raised Roman Catholic in the warmth and stability of a big two-parent home. He studied at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, and studied literature at Notre Dame. He studied law at Duke, where he met his wife, Emily, now a doctor.

At 27, he became the youngest prosecutor in state history. A Democrat, he switched his party in 1990, he says, because he no longer felt at home in it. His critics say he was just one more politician who saw the electorate edging right.

In this case, his actions -- whether motivated by ambition or conviction -- seem to single out poor black women, his critics say.

''We're dealing with a disease that does not automatically stop for nine months,'' said Brenda Dawkins, who runs the Keystone Substance Abuse Services Center in Rock Hill, S.C., 25 miles south of Charlotte, N.C. The law is designed to ''scare people into treatment.''

There are no statewide figures to gauge the success of the law. Mr. Condon said health workers tell him there seems to be fewer crack babies.

Ms. Dawkins does not think so. Her center usually has about 20 pregnant women addicted to drugs, usually crack. Now there are only 10. She believes others are passing up counseling and prenatal care because they are afraid of being arrested.

''I think they're going over the state line to North Carolina to have their babies,'' she said. ''I do not condone using crack. But the real damage is done by alcohol.''

But it would be much harder, politically, she said, to prosecute women for that. Alcohol abuse, like cigarette smoking, also causes birth defects, but such substances spread wider across racial and social lines.

But Mr. Condon counters that alcohol and tobacco are legal: ''They have no legal right to use cocaine.''

He stresses that women who choose treatment can avoid jail, that the law is intended to save babies more than punish mothers.

''I do not think it's a poverty problem,'' he said. ''I can't help the fact that it's the drug of choice for blacks. But, do we do nothing? If anything, black children deserve enhanced protection'' because so many are at risk.

While the A.C.L.U may challenge Mr. Condon because of the racial imbalance in the application of the child-abuse law, ''most of us would agree that women who are pregnant and taking drugs is not a good idea,'' Professor Lublin said. ''Even if he looks like the evil white man prosecuting the poor black woman crying in the corner of the picture, these are issues that liberals and Republicans have to grapple with.''